While going through Marzano’s instructional strategies, I realized that I actually have used and continue to use quite a few of these strategies in my class albeit with a different name. Foreign language classrooms needs a whole range of strategies as students not only need to know the content but also have to be able to apply the knowledge and skills in real life situations. There are many strategies I use to teach the different skills needed in a foreign language classroom. The skills are reading, writing, speaking and listening.
A combination of all of them or some of them is integrated into different units and topics learnt. An example could be of a unit on Health & Welfare.(The essential question could be the importance of health in the youth in the Hispanic World). The students are typically asked to think about the words and what comes to their mind when they see those words. Different students make different connections with these words. After these connections are made, I ask them either to make concept maps or diagrams on their computers or use inspiration 8 to connect the ideas. These are then used to reinforce vocabulary.
The second step is to read a text relating to the topic or see a YouTube video which talks about this topic. Reading comprehension involves:
· Skimming- The students are asked to read over the text and look for clues which would indicate the meaning of the text; these would be the title, photographs style etc. The students are asked to underline the keywords and guess the meaning of the words through: type of word (i.e., part of speech),surrounding words, inflection, Relationship with other words, context, word families, cognates and morphological features.
· Scanning- A list of guiding questions is provided to the students covering the six Ws (Who?What? Where? When? How? Why? ) which students write on the word document or can be discussed orally in class
· After a set of guiding questions, the students are asked to go into detailed reading and do some exercises like matching similar words, true or false and justification.
If they see a video related to the topic, then the exercises are more oral where the students discuss the important aspects.
For a subtopic the students read through two to three texts and some videos. Typically after the activity the students are asked to write down a journal/essay/article relating to the topic. The students are asked to prepare the drafts and share it with their classmates through google docs where they can get peer feedback. All the above strategies can come under Marzano’s Identifying Similarities and differences/summarizing and note taking.
Writing as mentioned above, automatically follows after the students have an understanding of the vocabulary. Google docs has been recently introduced in my class to encourage collaborative learning and also providing continuous feedback. I recently did a survey and realized that the students really enjoy using this tool. Another technology tool which I have started using with the class to reinforce vocabulary learnt is “quizlet” which allows them to play a game with the new vocabulary and also helps them to reinforce it. Again this could be one of the strategies under Marzano’s Homework and Practice, because foreign languages like mathematics require constant practice and reinforcement. Writing also is done in form of writing stories through discussion boards on the portal. Typically I start the story which the students complete. Each student is given a set of rules and time limit to add to the story, At the end of it I collate the whole story and project it and students are allowed to correct the grammatical or style errors. One of the tools I do want to use for this part is the social networking sites to see how they can be used for this activity to improve their writing.
Speaking is incorporated through impromptu discussions on a certain topic or through audacity. Audacity is used in my classroom to do homework assignments and also for collaborative work. It is a great tool for improving pronunciation and oral expression. Additionally as mentioned in Marzano’s instructional strategies, kinesthic activities such as role plays are used very often in my classroom. As Scarcellea and Crookall(1990) point out three merits of learning through simulations: 1) learners are exposed to large quantities of comprehensive input; 2) learners are actively involved; and 3) learners have positive effect. As role play is often done in pairs or groups this particular activity reinforces the effect of correcting pronunciation and timing. Another strategy which I apply often is: to ask the students the choose how they would like to express themselves and more often than not results have been amazing as students have chosen role plays, movie making or song writing for their presentations.
While I reflect on the various strategies that I use in my classroom, I am convinced that technology integration and self learning plays an important part in a foreign language classroom. I would like to work more on setting personalized objectives for the students as I feel that will make them more responsible for their learning. Another area of development for me would be incorporate self assessment as an essential tool. I think one of the good ways to do it would be to have electronic portfolios. I know that there are some existing lingua portfolios like the European Language Portfolio but I need to do more investigation to use this tool in all my classes.
References:
Crookall, D. (1990). Simulation. Gaming, and Language Learning in www.park.itc.u.-tokyo.ac.jp/eigo/KJEE/001/031-058.pdf
Miller S. ( 2008) Putting the Pieces Together based on research from Classroom Instruction that works
No comments:
Post a Comment